My "once a week" cooking experience from last week

I especially enjoyed this post by Crystal [1] about housekeeping through difficult seasons. I wish I could chalk up my lack of energy to being pregnant, but I'll still be taking her advice to heart. :)

A number of people asked for more details about my "once a week cooking" day last week [1]. I'm hoping to have more on this in the future, since last week was basically a flop... and I've been too exhausted this week to do much of anything.

Last Tuesday evening, I baked a couple things. At this point, I don't think I can even remember what I baked! Let's see... lemon poppyseed muffins, and some cookies. I was thinking that I would get a little head start on my big cooking day. I usually try to bake a couple of things each week for Joshua's lunches. I often freeze part of the goods, but since I am usually "behind" on baking, the muffins, cookies, etc. don't stay in the freezer very long! They're just too convenient. ;)

Anyway, I was up late Tuesday, washing lots of dishes (I remembered why I hate making cookies!) and planning my menu.

Wednesday, I started out pretty well.

I made some burger patties, and put them in the fridge for another day. That was simple enough. Why don't I plan burgers more often? :)

I browned the rest of the package of meat.

I cooked two kinds of pasta in the same water, by cooking one type, removing it with a spaghetti server, and then cooking the second type. I poured the second one through a strainer in the sink like I normally would.

And I chopped lots of veggies. (Those lasted about 4 days!)

Now, all that took me several hours. By then, the children were really wanting my undivided attention. I felt like I had only barely touched the surface, though!

I made some tortilla dough for spinach tortillas [1]. I had the bright (or not-so-bright -- read on!) idea of rolling them out ahead of time and cooking them at the last minute. I figured the batch of tortillas would last us two meals, and I'd cook them fresh each time.

It took me probably 30 minutes just to roll out all the tortillas, which would have been okay, except that I didn't know how to store them. I was worried that they would dry out, so I placed them between layers of plastic wrap, in a stack.

Bad, BAD idea. When I went to cook the tortillas, they had gotten gooey and stuck badly to the plastic wrap. Several of them completely tore apart when I tried to peel them off to cook them. NOT what you want to do after all the work of making them.

The other problem was that I had made them too big for my skillet. After several tortillas with wrinkled, partially-raw edges, I decided to take a knife and cut off part of my tortilla so it would fit. Another thing you don't really want to do, after the effort of rolling them all out.

In the end, I got 4 (yes, FOUR!!!!!!!!) usable tortillas. Can you imagine how frustrated I was by this point??!! :)

Well, the good news is that the steak fajita filling I had made for the tortillas turned out really yummy. I just couldn't believe I'd put all that time, effort, and mess (dishes!) into making 4 tortillas. I'm NEVER putting my raw tortillas in plastic wrap again!! :)

I can't even remember what else went wrong that day, but at 8 pm I had mounds of dishes and truly felt like I had accomplished very little. I was exhausted, and I had spent the childrens' nap time in the kitchen (making tortillas...), so I had literally been cooking all day!

What did I do wrong?!

I'll get better at this... I hope!